1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to integrated metrology systems comprising at least one utility meter, an information and control apparatus, a first data communication link, and a second data communication link. Further, the invention relates to information and control apparatus comprising an information and control panel and an interface for interaction with integrated metrology systems. Such systems and apparatus allow subscribers to budget, monitor, and manage their expenditures for utility commodities and to control their use of utility commodities through local or remote interfaces.
2. Description of Related Art
As utility commodity (e.g., natural gas, propane, heating oil, electricity, water, sewer, and the like) prices rise, increasing numbers of utility commodity user (hereinafter “subscribers”) search for ways to budget, monitor, and control the amount of money spent on such utility commodities. A fundamental problem faced by utility commodity uses in controlling their use of such utility commodities is that it is difficult to determine accurately and efficiently how much of each utility commodity the subscriber has used and is using and, therefore, how much the subscriber has spent and is spending on utility commodities at any point in time. Further, because utility commodity rates may vary over time and by time of use, subscribers may not know how much it costs to operate a given appliance, maintain a certain household temperature, water the lawn, or the like.
Utility commodity suppliers (e.g., public utility companies) also are largely unable to determine how much of a utility commodity a subscriber is using at any point in time. Such utility commodity suppliers largely are unable to determine what the maximum or peak amount of a utility commodity has been or is being used by an individual subscriber nor are they able to develop a correlation between time of utility commodity use or the amount used. The overwhelming majority of residential subscribers' accounts are billed by taking an accumulation of utility commodity use over a billing (e.g., a thirty-day) period of time. As a result of these metering limitations, subscribers may not receive or may not be able to receive the benefit of flexible pricing options that more closely match their individual usage profiles.
In addition, a utility commodity supplier frequently obtains these accumulated monthly readings by sending a meter reader to each and every subscriber's address to manually (e.g., visually) inspect a local utility meter and to manually record readings, for example, in any of a variety of known, hand-held data terminals (e.g., mobile meter readers (MMR)). Many subscribers' addresses receive multiple metered utility commodities, for which each of the local utility meters may be read once each billing period (e.g., once-a-month) by a different utility meter reader representing one of the utility commodity suppliers. This practice represents a significant cost in time and personnel to the utility commodity suppliers and, ultimately, to the subscribers. Moreover, because the utility meter readers often must enter the subscriber's property to read the utility meter, such practices also raise non-trivial, liability issues for the utility commodity suppliers and security issues for the subscribers.
Automatic utility meters, which permit the collection, calculation, storage, and display of data indicative of utility commodity usage are known. In addition, such automatic utility meters may include communication devices which permit bi-directional communication of data to and from a remote computer. Such automatic utility meters are direct replacements for existing utility meters, and such automatic electric utility meters may use direct read circuitry to sample and calculate power directly from an input voltage and current waveforms received from an electricity provider. U.S. Pat. No. 5,994,892, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference, describes this basic metrology and adds to it the capability of communications with an external device, such as a computer.